Review:

"The Truth About Addiction And Recovery"
Stanton Peele, with Archie Brodsky and Mary Arnold

Riding high on the success of his previous book, "Diseasing Of America",
Stanton Peele decided to provide a solution of his own to the problem of
addiction. Unfortunately, instead of relying upon the lessons learned within
his previous book, Peele decides to water down the message and fall into
the trap of continuing the Big Lie that everyone who is addicted needs a
Good Program. And, lookie here, Peele is selling one known as the Life Process
Program.

Stanton Peele, Ph.D., author of The Truth About Addiction And Recovery,
even gets into the act of contradicting the notion that people do indeed
quit smoking cold turkey on their own without the associated nonsense of
the RGM/ATI. For example, he cites the story of his uncle Oscar a.k.a. "Uncle
Ozzie" as an example of how people take moral action as an affirmation of
personal integrity to end an addiction once and for all:

"A man we know affectionately as Uncle Ozzie quit smoking in his early
forties after maintaining a three-pack-a-day habit for a quarter-century,
from the time he was a teenager. Ozzie worked at a bench, a proud and devoted
union man--indeed, he was shop steward. One day, when the price of cigarettes
had been raised, Ozzie prepared to put additional coins in a machine to purchase
a pack. A co-worker observing Ozzie joked, "Look at Oscar, the sucker! He'd
pay any price for a smoke. The tobacco companies have him by the balls!"
Ozzie turned to the man, looked at him for a moment, and said, "You're right.
I'm going to quit."
"Then can I have that pack of cigarettes?" his co-worker teased.
"What, and throw away the money I just spent?" Ozzie replied.
Ozzie smoked that pack, but he has never smoked again since that day over
thirty years ago. In that moment of awakening, the contradiction between
his smoking addiction and the value he placed on independence from management
and corporate power loomed so large that he could no longer ignore it. From
that point on, to continue smoking--to admit that the "bosses" controlled
his life--would have been more painful than to quit."-- Stanton Peele, Ph.D., "Smoking: The Toughest Habit To Lick?",
pp. 107-108 The Truth About Addiction And
Recovery

Not really lurid, right? Certainly not the usual overly-dramatic stories
of a man desperate for a fix. And Peele knows this. Disappointed, he immediately
follows the above anecdote with this paragraph of pure unfounded assertion:

"Uncle Ozzie claims that he never thought about quitting until the day
he actually quit. Still, the story a person tells years later may idealize
the process, just hitting the high points rather than tracing the evolution
of consciousness that went on both before and after the climactic moment.
Well before he smoked his last pack, Ozzie may have had glimpses of how he
was harming his family and his health by smoking."-- Stanton Peele, Ph.D., "Smoking: The Toughest Habit To Lick?",
pp. 108 The Truth About Addiction And
Recovery

Well, if Ozzie did have doubt and guilt outside of his own co-workers' concerns
he certainly would have expressed them. Instead, Peele sticks with the stereotype
of the typical "addict" who lies and underplays the addiction itself, wanting
for some form of internal tormented struggle to spice up the proceedings.

The irony is that this is his same uncle he profiled within his earlier book,
Diseasing of America, published in 1989 two years prior to
Truth. So here's what Peele left out of his later book's narrative
regarding his uncle's motivation in quitting smoking:

"Why did my uncle quit that day? It's hard to say. He claims that in that
time and place (he worked on a General Electric assembly line, and all of
his coworkers smoked), he had never once thought about quitting. But I think
I know something about the underlying values that made him quit. For Ozzie
to be told--and more important, to believe--that his behavior meant he was
a sucker to American tobacco conglomerates was equivalent to his realizing
he was under the control of those he hated most, and that his union activism
(indeed, his entire life) was being compromised. Imagine if a Jewish smoker
discovered that the Nazis owned the companies that made cigarettes and were
trying to addict all Jews! This is something like the reaction my uncle
had.
I often jokingly summarize this story for addiction audiences by saying,
"This story makes clear that the best way to quit smoking is to become a
communist." Of course, the joke is that only for a very strong anticompany,
pro-union activist like my uncle could a sense of servitude to the capitalist
system serve as the motivation to quit smoking. But my facetious claim is
really quite close to the common claim that the best way to get everyone
to quit drinking is to force them to join A.A.. A.A. works for those with
salient religious values, who place God in the middle of their decisions,
and who favor group confessionals. Others often think A.A. rituals are foolish,
even offensive--just as they would if we made them join the Communist Party.
(Several people have now sued to reverse state regulations requiring them
to attend A.A. on the grounds that these violate their religious
freedom.)"-- Stanton Peele, Ph.D., "How People Quit Addictions", pp. 189-190
Diseasing Of America

This is proof positive that Peele damn well knows that ending an addiction
can be as spontaneous as that, thus making him a liar through omission and
a hypocrite by changing the narrative of Uncle Ozzie's story to
"idealize" Peele's Life Process Program. After all, as mentioned by
McWilliams, 40,000,000 have successfully quit smoking without any nonsense
and fanfare. Heck, even true-believer disease theory charlatans acknowledge
that fact by euphemistically calling quitting "spontaneous remission".

Likewise, the case against coerced recovery group attendance is made yet
again. I agree that no one should be coerced into a religious organization
such as A.A. to quit drinking just as no one should be coerced into joining
a political party to quit smoking, much less any bad habit. Having to adopt
a foreign philosophy only complicates the simple matter of never using again.
One is more likely to quit based upon their own personal values and beliefs
rather than those of others, thus internalizing that decision to quit and
making that decision stick on moral grounds. Your life is your own and no
one elses. You don't need other
peoples' religion or politics for that.

As for the heroin-nicotine connection, Peele cites a study of self-recovered
former heroin addicts within Truth which also undermines the credibility
of the addictiveness of tobacco via the analogy to heroin. And, when read
with Uncle Ozzie's story in mind, these facts contradict the myth that there's
any drama to be found in quitting a heroin, nicotine or any other addiction
for that matter:

"The common belief that no one can overcome heroin addiction except through
treatment has been conclusively disproved by sociologists Dan Waldorf and
Patrick Biernacki, who interviewed hundreds of untreated ex-addicts in
California. In his 1986 book, Pathways From Heroin Addiction: Recovery
Without Treatment, Biernacki lists the following among his findings, each
of which attacks a key inaccuracy in our conceptions of narcotics
use:(9)

Addicts can and do recover "naturally"--on their own without the aid of
any therapeutic intervention.

Naturally recovered former addicts are relatively easy to find and
interview.

Addicts are not alike in character or lifestyle.

All addicts do not undergo the same social careers or become equally affected
by their addiction.

Some addicts lead basically "straight" lives, that is, they are not
criminals.

Some people drift in and out of their addiction without much conscious
thought or consideration.

Some addicts can and do overcome cravings to use opiates when they are
abstinent and thereby avoiding relapsing.

Addict folklore and professional understandings do not adequately explain
those addicts who have quit on their own.

Some people who have stopped their addiction to opiates do not continue
to think of themselves as addicted."

These are eye-opening facts in regards to an actual study of a self-recovered
population. But why does Peele contradict himself, even going as far as lying
about his uncle's motivations? I'll guess that just like any other capitalist
he wouldn't be able to sell his Life Process Program if people knew how easy
it is to just KNOCK IT OFF once and for all and were informed that
it isn't as awe-inspiring or as frightening as it's often hyped within the
state/corporate-owned and subsidised mass media. This contradiction also
renders nearly a third of Truth's text irrelevant. Diseasing of
America does a far superior job of performing that duty and I recommend
it over Truth. Therefore, Truth winds up being redundant and
inferior when compared to its predecessor.

I'll go even further: If I can write within a few
paragraphs what "quitting" is, a definition which also includes what
addiction is as well (after all, if you don't know the obvious details of
what the problem is then you'll be at a disadvantage in defeating it), then
what's his excuse?

I don't hold a doctorate and my day job is completely unrelated to my unpaid
hobby of liberating newcomers from the grip of addiction while being a hardcore
critic of the social services system. I'm simply a Ph.D. (Phormer.Drunk.)
who has been inside of it all and knows that the system is the one perpetuating
this nonsense that addiction is hard to beat.

It's not. It's very easy! And, when one who is addicted realizes that truth
firsthand it's going to be very difficult for that person to hold back any
ill will towards a deceptive and harmful system. The apologists are fully
aware of the fact and have pathologized
resentment from the start. So, by the charlatans' standards, if the person
who was lied to gets angry, "that's only their disease talking". To
these "therapists" there's no such thing as justified anger,
especially concerning someone who was lied to and harmed by those
lies.

Unfortunately, with social cultism being the norm within AAmerican
society, people would rather waste their time and money looking as though
they're working a Good Program. It's not the addict's fault that they have
to jump through those unnecessary hoops. Society demands it and, inadvertently,
causing more problems by overcomplicating the problem. And, with the likes
of people like Stanton Peele, are more than willing to sell one while distorting
the facts of their own family for the sake of profiting through overcomplication.

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